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Quotes

Private Jackson: What I mean by that, sir, is if you was to put me and this here sniper rifle anywhere up to and including one mile from Adolf Hitler... with a clean line of sight... Pack your bags, fellas. War's over. Amen.

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Mistakes

When Miller and Ryan are talking outside a cafe (I think), Miller grabs a chair, sits down in front of Ryan and puts his right hand on top of his left, but in the following shot his left hand is on top of his right. See more...

Trivia

Director Steven Spielberg reduced the color saturation of the film by approximately 60% to more closely match his artistic vision. This led to a flood of complaints by customers when the movie was broadcast on TV and cable, so the cable and TV companies had to turn the colour gain back up again. See more...

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Movie Mistakes blog

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Saving Private Ryan (1998) - 107 corrections

Directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Adam Goldberg, Edward Burns, Matt Damon, Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Vin Diesel (add more)

Genres: Action, Drama, War

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

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Well after the beach has been secured and communication posts are set up where Upham is typing and Miller comes to reassign him, it then shows a panning view of the beach of soldiers still unloading. However, the big X-shaped tank traps were still littered all over the beach. During the assault there were combat engineers telling soldiers to get away from the traps so they can destroy them. How come even now after they've had the beach secured this long they haven't removed the tank traps? [Because there were a lot of them, and not many engineers, most of whom were killed in the onslaught.]
Edit Corrected by rswarrior
Throughout the film we see indications that someone has been shot when a puff of grey dust comes from the body as it gets hit. This grey dust is coming from a smaller version of a paint ball filled with a white powder that the camera can capture. The mistake is that it should be blood, not a white powder - unless the entire German army from D-day to Ramelle is dusty. [When someone is shot, blood will only splurt out if a major artery has been hit. In all other cases, a gunshot wound will just look like a black burnhole. This is because the heat of the bullet will sear the wound shut at first. After some moments, the wound will start bleeding.]
Edit Corrected by Audie-T
The beach in the movie is just too small in comparison to the historical Omaha Beach. When visiting it today, Omaha Beach does look much smaller because houses and a road were built, halving the original beach. But in 1944, the beach was miles in length. Because the beach is so much smaller in the movie, you can see the German machine-gunners and the US soldiers they are shooting at in the same frame. And because they are shooting from such a small distance, they can fire in long, wild bursts. So it is understandable why the beach was so small in the movie: because of artistic license. Most of the US soldiers that were killed on Omaha Beach never even saw their enemy because of the distance. [This entry corrects itself: artistic license. This is decent trivia, but it's not a movie mistake.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
The whole "Omaha Beach Attack" takes about 25 minutes in real-time in the film. The director does not use any visual or audio cues to indicate that more time (minutes, hours) passes between different shots. There should have been fades to black or whatever and sound fading in and out to indicate the passing of time. Historically, the assault on Omaha Beach lasted the entire morning, into the afternoon. The rushed battle in this movie, while engrossing and spectacular, does not do proper justice to the ordeal that the men on Omaha Beach lived through. While flawed in many other respects, the movie "The Longest Day" does indicate that it took them a long, long time to finally get off the beach. [While I must applaud your devotion to the soldiers there, this can't be considered a mistake. The director chose to compress time in order to make the movie an acceptable length. Clearly it still did justice to the battle as many WWII veterans described it as a true representation of the fighting they went through.]
Edit Corrected by Grumpy Scot
As already stated, the stunning opening battle scenes were shot in Ireland, not France: County Wicklow's Killester Beach, to be exact. [The beach scenes were actually filmed on Curracloe Beach in County Wexford. My sister was part of the crew (hair stylist). I have been there several times.]
Edit
There is a part in the opening battle scene where you see a German soldier's point of view when he is firing down at the Americans, If you look closely you can see the German soldier is clearly firing in another direction than where the bullets are hitting. [There was more than one German shooting at the time.]
Edit
In the scene where Mellish and the other Ranger hear footsteps coming up the stairs, you hear one set of footsteps. When they call out Upham's name, the footsteps stop. When Mellish fires into the wall, you hear a body drop and blood pool by the room opening. Yet there is no body outside the room, only the 'other' German soldier firing through the wall, shooting the one Ranger in the neck and ultimately killing Mellish. The only soldier outside that room was Upham, still on the stairwell. [You never see just outside the door.]
Edit Time
In the last battle scene in the end, there is a lengthy shot of Mellish, Henderson, and Upham running to a building to cover the right flank with a machine gun. When you first see out of the hole in the wall (the one they use to fire out of) you can see in the background what looks like a Sd.Kfz.124 (tank) moving towards the right. Soon after this (right after they put the sticky bombs on the tank) there is a shot where Mellish is screaming about the flank folding, and once again you can see out of the hole and what looks like the exact same shot of the Sd.Kfz.124 moving towards the right. The tank would have had to go in reverse, and then go forward again, and there is only one of these tanks in the scene. [Actually it had been previously established by Jackson that there were 2 "Panzers" along with the 2 Tigers heading to the town. Also, before the Tiger tanks began driving down the road to attack it was said that neither of the two "Panzer" tanks took the bait.]
Edit Time
Capt. Miller and Pvt. Ryan throw the 60mm mortar rounds as grenades. This can not happen. The 60mm mortar round uses a type of propellant that is solid and looks like sliced cheese. It is placed around the outside of the lower section of the mortar round, which is also the fin area. They would need to remove the propellant first before they could hold onto the fin, which leads to the second mistake. The fin of the 60mm mortar is hollow with holes drilled through it. This is to allow the flame from the primer to reach the propellant. If a person was to hold onto the fin and hit the primer end on a piece of metal, the primer would ignite and burn your hand. [Not only is it possible to use a mortar round like this but an American Medal of Honor winner Beauford Anderson did so on Okinawa during the action that won his medal.]
Edit
In the opening scenes, as the soldiers are landing on the beach, their rifles are wrapped in plastic wrap. This type of plastic was not invented until the end of the 1940s and later. Water resistant "cellophanes" and wraps were a much later invention by inventors such as Saran and Reynolds. [This is incorrect. To view a picture of the actual plastic bags used to protect rifles on D-day, go here: http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.aspx?Item=145250119.]
Edit Corrected by jhoffman100@yahoo.com
In the beginning of the film, the soldier that Miller is dragging through the water dies. But then you can see this same soldier again various times throughout the film, for example when he asks Miller where the rallying point is. [It's a different soldier. They're played by different actors, even listed separately in the credits.]
Edit Corrected by jhoffman100@yahoo.com
During certain scenes in the movie, we see Jackson switching his Weaver M73B1 sniper scope on his M1903A4 sniper rifle with a Unertl sniper scope.  The problem is that the Unertl scope was used exclusively by the U.S. Marines in the Pacific Theatre on their M1903A1 sniper rifle. [The Unertal scope was also used by the German Army. There's a good chance that he could have taken the scope from a German rifle.]
Edit
Most viewers believe right up until the end of the movie that it is Tom Hanks character, Captain Miller, who is the old veteran in the beginning of the film crying in the French cemetary. This is because the camera shot fades from his eyes to Captain Miller's eyes in the scene just before the Normandy invasion. If you look very closely though you will see a very small "Screaming Eagle" pin on the old mans jacket indicating he is a paratrooper from the 101st Airborne Division. Captain Miller was a ranger. [It's impossible to say what "most movie viewers" believe. There's no way of knowing what the director had in mind for that shot, and I (for one) knew it was Matt Damon as soon as I saw him.]
Edit
On the beach when Miller is talking to the wounded man, the Navy beach Patrol tell him, "I've got to clear these obstacles, etc." In one shot, he removes the fuse from behind his ear. A second later it still behind his ear. [In that scene the Navy beach Patrol is dragging two fuses. That's why it seems like a mistake. Actually you can see him setting the first fuse before taking the second.]
Edit
Upham halts a fleeing Steamboat Willie and five other Germans. Just before Willie says "Upham" (Willie's last word before getting shot), note that the German second from the left is smiling. Hardly a situation where you might expect any of them to be amused. [He's not amused. He's delirious with fear. Facing your death can do that.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius Time
In the final battle scene, soldiers jump on top of a German tank and throw a few grenades in - the grenades don't appear to go off. [The grenades were duds. It happens.]
Edit Corrected by rswarrior
In the scene in the French village after the soldier attempting to rescue the girl is shot, where the German marksman is shown being shot through the scope is an impossibility. Modern higher powered rifles are unable to pierce a scope, let alone pierce directly through the scope and through the German's head. Also, a marksman on a battlefield, under stress, would never be able to place such an accurate shot. Sources: Mythbusters. [Many veterans mention such a shot being taken in memoirs written after the war. First-hand accounts by veterans would seem more definitive than a TV show that can only attempt to simulate a given situation. Further, its only impossible with a modern scope, the Mythbusters revisited the myth and found that it is in fact plausible with a period scope.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker Time
At the beginning of the film, during the beach invasion and right after Miller comes out of his first little episode, watch behind the soldier who yells, "What the hell do we do now, sir?" When the camera is pointing at Miller, the same patch of water explodes three times. [The Germans dropped a lot of shells on Omaha beach that day. Everything was probably hit more than once.]
Edit
When Private Ryan and Captain Miller are in the situation where they no longer have ammo to fight back, Private Ryan comes up with the idea of using the "sixty rounds". They proceed to go through the process of pounding the tail end of the sixty rounds to create grenades to fight back the Germans. However on the last one that Captain Miller throws, it's clear that he has two grenades on his belt that he has not used. You would think he would have used the real grenades first before resulting to makeshift ones. [What they needed were bullets to fit their guns. They had none, so they used the bullets they had as makeshift grenades. No sense using the real ones until absolutely necessary.]
Edit Time
It is a great irony that the cowardly soldier just happens to be named Upham. It is an unusual name and happens to be shared with Captain Charles Upham, a New Zealand soldier who, during WWII, was awarded the Victoria Cross twice. He is only the third person in history and the only combat soldier to receive the VC twice (the other two being medics). So the fictional Upham couldn't be more different to his real life namesake. [Without evidence that the choice of name was an intentional nod to the real-life Upham, this lies entirely within the realm of coincidence and, as such, is not valid trivia.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker

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